Colorado’s regulated psilocybin program faces rising costs and barriers, prompting calls for safer, more accessible community care

Colorado’s regulated psilocybin program achieved an important milestone by pairing statewide decriminalization for personal use with a licensed care system, but its early operation is creating serious access and sustainability concerns. Dori Lewis and Shannon Hughes argue that high training, licensing, facility, and regulatory costs are pricing out small practices and clients, while rushed training may leave facilitators underprepared for nuanced screening decisions. They support meaningful oversight, but question requirements that add expense without improving safety. Their three proposed changes are to reduce unnecessary compliance burdens, extend training and consultation over longer periods to build practical competence, and give the facilitator community more room to develop peer support, integration groups, and other solutions. They contend that Colorado’s experiment will succeed only if it preserves ethical, diverse, relational, and affordable care rather than reproducing a profit-driven industry model.